


That’s not your color, bitch

by SavingAcadia



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: College!Gerard, Female!OC - Freeform, MTF!Gerard, Trans!Gerard, nb!gerard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25720075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SavingAcadia/pseuds/SavingAcadia
Summary: Gerard is feeling some gender dysphoria in the morning. When he goes to borrow his housemate AJ's lip gloss he gets caught by her roommate Dahlia who to his delight is surprisingly helpful.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	That’s not your color, bitch

**Author's Note:**

> I was having a day several months back where I was feeling especially MTF (I'm genderfluid) and it had to come out via Gerard Way in a wholesome fluff, gender-doesn't-matter way.

Gerard had a strange relationship with his gender. No one really understood because he wasn’t one thing or the other. He didn’t want to change his name and he didn’t care much about pronouns, but he did think of himself as a girl sometimes. He didn’t want boobs and he didn’t find dysphoria in his skinny androgynous body, its just sometimes it felt like his body belonged to someone different, like there were multiple people in his brain and he was all of them and they didn’t have different personalities, they were just… different genders.

Some mornings were harder than others to feel comfortable in his own skin, like there were insects crawling beneath his muscles until he looked the way he felt and then they’d stop, and he just felt normal, like himself, whichever self that was. No matter how he presented he was still the badass in skinny jeans and a leather jacket, no gender could take that away. Still, as he stood in the mirror this morning, shifting his weight between feet and watching his hips sway, it wasn’t quite right. It was too masculine. The outfit was fine. It was about as gender neutral as it gets, but he felt frazzled as the manly face stared back at him. It wasn’t right, and it was making him anxious.

Gerard huffed in frustration and walked to the door of his bedroom, opening it and peeking back and forth to make sure the hall way clear of his roommates. With 4 of them in the house, Mikey had his own room downstairs and Dahlia and AJ shared the room down the hall from Gerard. As he figured, it was silent. They all had morning classes and had been gone for hours now. The late morning sun sank down the narrow hall through the ancient lace curtain that covered it, painting the hall in its intricate design. Even if no one was home, he felt paranoid about what he was about to do. His heart was beating in his ears as he approached his housemates’ room and carefully pushed open the door to the dark room.

There were vanities on either side of the room, but Gerard headed straight toward AJ’s. He wouldn’t dare even look at Dahlia’s. She had four cases of expensive makeup stacked up next to it and he was sure if anyone touched it she would riot. She never left the house without being photoshoot ready with bold colors, eons of glitter, and flawless contour. She invested so much in her makeup collection that it was built into her annual budget. Too make it worse, Dahlia was a self-proclaimed “brand snob”, meaning she refused to pick up any makeup at Target. She so often explained why the pigmentation and the texture made the quality and safety better, and while Gerard tried to pretend he wasn’t paying attention, he clung onto every word, wanting to know what she knew. He knew there were literally thousands of dollars of makeup in her collection, and he didn’t dare.

So Gerard snuck over to AJ’s vanity. It was messier and sparse with just a few things scattered across the table. A half-used, lint covered stick of Secret tipped over on its side, a hair brush, and her Wet and Wild lipgloss from the CVS down the street. His fingers were trembling as he carefully picked up the pink tube and turned it over in his hands. His breath was shaky. It felt wrong to use AJ’s makeup without permission, but he couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell anyone. It was too complicated.

He didn’t want to change his name and he didn’t care much about pronouns, but he did sometimes think of himself as “she”. That didn’t mean he wanted to be a girl, and he didn’t want to change. He just was Gerard, and in being that, sometimes she was Gerard. His body was his own and plenty masculine in the shoulders and legs, and her body was her own and plenty feminine in the waist and hips. There wasn’t dysphoria in the way he was built because he kind of got the best of both worlds. The dysphoria came with not having the flexibility to present both ways as he felt fit. Sometimes in the middle of the day even he’d feel a shift. Man in the morning, woman at night. It was confusing and he couldn’t put words to it so there was no way to get his housemates on board.

He was determined. Gerard used sheer mental willpower to stop shaking and twist open the bubblegum pink solution. He had the wand no more than a millimeter away from his bottom lip when he heard, “That’s not your color, bitch,” causing him to jump and drop both pieces of the lipgloss down on the vanity counter and helplessly watched them roll off onto the floor. He spun around to see the sassy-as-ever Dahlia standing in the doorway with a hand on her hip. He was winded from fear, trapped in his own silence as he stared at her glittering green eyes, surrounded by tiny blue rhinestones and doll-like false lashes. Her long, wavy black ponytail hung almost down to her waist and tiny black baby hairs curled around her flawless bronze face. She was so stunning and powerful it left him speechless. Dahlia was the kind of woman he wanted to be, didn’t take shit from anyone and seemed to always know who she was and take what she wanted.

In the silence Dahlia flicked the lights on and to avoid blinking in his weakness, Gerard dropped to the floor to find the contaminated lipgloss. Without giving him another look, his housemate turned her back to him, waving a hand over her should and insisting, “Don’t worry about it. That drugstore product is fucking shit anyway.” Gerard looked up helplessly as Dahlia walked to her own vanity and began digging in one of the four cases beside it. Quickly Gerard collected the lint-covered makeup, but before he could stand, Dahlia had appear before him, reaching out a product toward him saying, “This is what you want to be using.” Curiously Gerard took the product from her and examined it closely. It was a bright pink but not so opaque that it was overwhelming. Unlike AJ’s makeup, this lipgloss had no glitter in it, it was nothing but satin. He carefully read the front. Half of it was in French, which made sense from a company called “Lancôme Paris”. It was called “Juicy Tubes” and had the tagline, “Ultra Shiny Lip Gloss” at the bottom.

The packaging was simple enough, but the text made it seem fancy, and that excited Gerard. He looked up at Dahlia with a wash of relief and excitement and she couldn’t help but turn up a corner of her lip when she saw his smile. “C’mon,” Dahlia suggested, reaching out a hand to help her friend off the floor. He took it and let her lead him across the room to her own vanity, pulling out the chair for him to sit down in front of the mirror. He looked at the tube in his hands once more, turning it over in his fingers before looking to Dahlia for approval. She made a face that said, “Go on. I’m waiting.” before plopping down on the corner of her bed. She leaned back to her elbows and Gerard turned back to his unsure face in the mirror.

He knew this was what he wanted, but he wasn’t prepared to express himself in front of anyone. All he had intended was to put on the lipgloss to look in the mirror and quiet the crawling dysphoria, then wipe it off quick before anyone could see him in it. This was different. Dahlia was watching expectantly, and she would see him as he really was. He was vulnerable and that made him hesitate. He began to drop his hands in defeat, ready to race out of the room.

As if she’d read his mind, Dahlia reminded Gerard, “Your gonna feel better if you do it.” Gerard sighed, knowing she was right and hating her newfound insightfulness. “Especially if you do it yourself,” she continued, “It’ll help knowing it came from yourself, somewhere inside you.”

Gerard looked up at himself in the mirror and visualized what he wanted, or rather, what he felt, and he became determined to rip off the bandaid and do it already. He quickly unscrewed the cap to reveal the lipstick-shaped plastic with a small hole in the middle to dispense product. He held it to his mouth and slowly squeezed as he dragged it across his bottom lip. He was quick to rub his lips together like he had seen in so many movies and TV shows before separating his lips with a pop and leaning in to the mirror to examine the satin sheen. His face was only inches away from his own reflection and he could vaguely hear Dahlia behind him ask, “Tastes good, right?” He pressed his lips together one more time in response, spreading the product further. True to its name, the lipgloss tasted delightfully fruity. He turned his face to the side to see how the sheen would react to the movement, glinting in the light.

As he was engrossed in his own reflection, Dahlia stood up and walked up behind Gerard. She ran her fingers through his long, bright red hair, pulling it back and gauked, “Look at her!” Gerard smiled at the female pronoun before he could stop himself. He didn’t want to change his name and he didn’t care much about pronouns, but he couldn’t help but feel validated by the comment. He felt seen, he felt right. A warmth radiated in his stomach as he continued to stare at his reflection. The feeling of Dahlia’s long, stiletto nails scratching across his scalp as she combed through his hair was soothing.


End file.
